Back to School: Creative Writing 2.0.2.0

Three years ago, I was asked to relocate to a new classroom in my school. I packed up ten-plus years of teacher things and moved to a more-or-less identical room in another part of the building.

This summer, in another shuffle of classroom assignments, I was asked to move again — back, it turns out, to 226, the room where I’d started out and taught for so long. I was happy to discover, when I returned, the ghosts of my old decorations — postcards, photos, bookmarks, bumper stickers, students drawings — still lingering on the big bulletin board at the front of the room, three years after I left, their memories imprinted into the cork.

I’m a big believer in classroom decorations, not the mass-produced posters and banners you can buy from the teacher store, but decorations of a more personal and DIY sort. What’s on the walls can go a long way toward establishing the classroom as a safe and creative space, and the less one classroom looks like the next, the better. This year, things are a bit different: most of my decorations are still in boxes from this last, hurried move, and many of my students are learning from home, not in the classroom at all. The need for a safe and creative space is at least as important as ever, but that “space” is more metaphorical. For the moment, in Room 226, the ghosts of decorations past will do.

One Friday in March, we left school for the weekend and did not return until August. I swept through my room just once after that, to grab some necessary books and papers. I didn’t set foot in the school again until July, when I started the move to my new (old) classroom.

In this last room, the one I packed up this summer, I’d made a mural of huge photos of writers, figures I imagined as some of the patron saints of our class. The students and the photographed writers had no choice but to gaze into each other’s faces all year, which I liked. Early on, I asked my Creative Writing students to warm up for their writing day by drawing, in their notebooks, one of the faces from the wall. Then they moved on to drawing the faces of their own creative heroes. (To see the original mural and a few student notebook drawings, see this blog post from last November.) Before the schools shut down, we started using the drawing time to learn more about the world: students would take about five minutes to Google Czech or Nigerian or Bolivian writers (for example), then choose an arresting face from the images that resulted, draw it, and finally surround the drawing with a few biographical facts, culled from a brief internet search. As an alternative, they could type in their own first names, followed by the word writer, and quickly research and draw a writer with whom they happened to share a name.

In February or March, students had started taking turns drawing their pictures on the classroom’s two whiteboards. I hoped to have every available whiteboard inch covered by the end of the semester.

But then the virus came, and we went home, and the school stood empty for months. So when I finally returned to pack up the room, I was greeted by all these faces, each of which I still adore. Every one of them is somehow alive with the unique personality of the student who made the drawing:

I was reluctant for a long time to push my Creative Writing students to draw pictures — or even sometimes sing — which are decidedly not activities they signed on for in a writing class. But these whiteboard faces persuade me to believe that our drawing time is time remarkably well spent. If nothing else, the drawings have brought me enormous joy — I’ve looked at them so much it’s hard to believe they might never have existed. And it made me glad to know these figures stood watch over the classroom all spring and summer, when no one else was there.

Our first assignment in Creative Writing this year had nothing to do with writing. It was inspired in part by Kurt Vonnegut’s now-famous letter to a bunch of high school students in 2006, the one where he implores them to “Practice any art … no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”

I share the assignment here, in case you would like to do any of it yourself. I’ve also included, at the end of this post, a few student responses, which have convinced me that this, too, was time well spent.

Thanks for reading, y’all. Stay safe, and be kind.

FRIDAY, 8/21/20:

This isn’t a writing assignment, but more like an invitation to play. The purpose is to shake off some self-consciousness, to do something silly and pure, to open yourself up to art and accident and vulnerability, to express yourself by yourself, for yourself. I will not see the results of this activity, but I do want you to send me a short email after it’s done, telling me how it went.

Do ONE of the following:

1. If you have a driver’s license and access to a car: Make yourself a short playlist of the songs that give you the most life and the most energy and the most joy, the kinds of songs that are best if you play them loud, songs you know or can at least fake every word. Go for a 20 minute drive, by yourself, blasting those songs, signing along as loudly as you can.

2. If you don’t have a driver’s license or car access, skip the playlist and the driving. Just go take a shower and sing your heart out. If possible, do this when you are alone in the house, and really sing your heart out. Loud! Make it a long shower, with lots of songs.

3. Without consulting the internet; spend at least 10 minutes trying to do an impression of each of the following. Don’t worry if your impression is terrible. Don’t be afraid to laugh at how hilariously bad you are at impressions. But do make a mental note of which impression is your best. Spend at least a couple minutes each trying to imitate each of these:

+ a family member

+ a famous actor

+ a famous singer

+ a famous politician

+ a cartoon character

When you’re finished, consider: what would an impression of yourself sound like? Can you do an impression of yourself?

4. Spend 10 minutes making funny faces in the mirror. For inspiration, you may want to first watch the first three minutes of this video, in which Patton Oswalt makes faces for the camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVNCm8lhB80 (The second three minutes may also be of interest, but they don’t include funny faces.)

5. Pour a tall glass of water. Spend a few minutes gargling some of your favorite tunes. Optional bonus challenge: after you’ve done this by yourself for a while, invite a family member to join you. See if you can gargle in harmony or gargle a duet, swapping lines of the song. For best results, do this standing face to face.

6. Draw each of the following from memory, without consulting the internet: a giraffe, a koala, an orangutan, an ostrich, an owl. Don’t spend more than 5 minutes on any one of them. Live with (and celebrate) your mistakes. Only once you are finished, compare your drawings with online photos of the real thing. Revel in the differences.

7. Find a place, maybe but not necessarily your bedroom, where you can be totally alone. Lock the door, if possible, and put on a favorite, high energy song. Play it loud enough to drown out the rest of the world. You know that phrase, “Dance as if no one is looking?” Do that. Don’t even watch yourself, because then you have an audience and it becomes a performance: avoid all mirrors. I ‘d recommend going a step further and finding a dark place, a closet or a bathroom, maybe. Turn off the lights and do your dancing in the dark, where all there is is your invisible body and the music. If you have trouble picking out a song, try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMXBJW1PuU8. Whatever song you choose, dance to it at least twice, back to back.

8. Draw pictures with your feet, holding the pen, pencil, or marker in between your toes. A marker may be best because of the thickness; feel free to experiment to find the best writing utensil for you. Draw your own self portrait, first, and then at least 2 of the following, on separate sheets:

+ your home

+ your family

+ your biggest crush, if you’ve got one (either someone you know, or a “celebrity crush”)

+ your pet, if you’ve got one, but wearing a cape

+ Dracula

+ Spiderman vs. Batman, the ultimate showdown

9. Only if you don’t already know how: spend the weekend learning to juggle. Get as good as you can by Monday, even if it’s still pretty rough. Feel free to consult internet videos for help.

Okay, that’s the list. Do one of those things. If you want to do more than one, that’s fine, too, but make sure you do at least one of these, and do it whole-heartedly. Do it alone, and try your best to be as unself-conscious as possible.

Immediately after you do this, email me a brief description of what you did, how it went, how it felt, etc. Just 3-6 sentences documenting the experience is all I need.

That was the assignment. You’ll have to take my word that I received a bunch(!!) of inspiring responses. Here are just a few:

I took a shower and sung my heart out as you said, and really gave it my best shot! It was loud, ugly, and loaded with vocal cracks, and unruly shrills! It was … the most cringe-worthy and satisfying thing I have ever done! I butchered: Lewis Capaldi “Bruises” “Someone You Loved” “before you go” and many other great songs. And let’s say…I felt as powerful as a battalion, and that’s a statement!

I did the first option and made a short upbeat playlist and drove for 20 minutes. This made me feel energetic and I wanted to accomplish things after I got home, and I did the rest of the day I worked out did speed drills, and went to the park to play basketball.

During the weekend, I stayed in my bedroom singing national anthems of different developing countries. I didn’t dance because I don’t dance and dancing is not my thing. It made me feel extremely good while singing them because I feel like I want to help those countries.

So, I drove around with the music up pretty high. Higher than normal. It was after work and I was going home. I had a terrible, stressful day and I went on my favorite playlist and felt free. I took the long way home and I normally go under the speed limit, but I decided to go over. I know, so rebellious and scary. In that moment, I was as free as a bird with the world in my hands. I felt absolutely elated and when I came home, I was in a better mood than I had been for a week.

I did the impressions option for today, and it was a funny experience. For the singer portion I tried to do Ariana Grande, and I was way off, though that was expected. But the funny thing about the whole thing is that my mom heard me from the other room and started laughing. She actually came in to try and help me with my impressions, but we just kinda sat there and laughed for most of the attempts. Then we went out and got ice cream and fries, because why not?

Why not is right. That right there is what I would call some homeschool at its finest.

Draw Your Ancestors

1. Classroom Faces

At the start of this school year, I moved into a new classroom and had a new, big, blank cinder-block wall to fill. So I used one of those giant printers to print out life-sized and larger-than-life photos of a few American literary icons, and I arranged their faces into a huge collage:

Your Words Can Change the World — *(Left to right, this is Eudora Welty, Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Walt Whitman, Flannery O’Connor, and Toni Morrison.)*

I think of it as a (partial!) Mount Rushmore of American writing, a wall of literary ancestors. Their job is to remind us that our words, too, can change the world.

Over the course of my Creative Writing course, we’ll read at least a little something by most of these writers, and sooner or later we’ll talk — at least a little — about the rest. To be sure, it’s a subjective and incomplete wall of ancestors, filtering the “canon” through my own biases and tastes, but it’s a start. (I keep in the hollow space of my podium a huge, rolled up head of Kurt Vonnegut, whose impish sidelong glance I just couldn’t fit, physically, anywhere into that puzzle of faces. Later I may create a second line-up on another wall; in the meantime, when Vonnegut comes up in discussion, I can whip out and unfurl his image.)

2. Student Drawings

Especially because Creative Writing happens to be the first period of the day — and because I think some “mindless” drawing can awaken some playful, spontaneous, unpredictable part of the brain — I sometimes like to start the class by asking students to draw for five or six minutes. I’ve asked them to reserve the first three pages of their Creative Writing notebooks for these start-of-class drawings and doodles, so that by the end of the year those pages will be crammed with all sorts of images — images which will serve as untamed and untranslatable intro to all the words that will follow. Of course, half the class complains that they “can’t draw,” which is the real point (it turns out, they can). But because they only have five minutes for the drawings, the perfectionists have to abandon perfectionism and the slow-to-starters have to jump in, ready or not. There’s no time to think, and everybody is equal.

I started the year’s drawing times by having students choose one of the big literary faces on the wall and try, quickly, to draw it. At the start of the year, they’re likely to know something about one or two of these writers — probably Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes — but the rest, so far, are strangers to them. Ultimately you have to choose your own creative ancestors, and I know my students haven’t chosen these particular writers as theirs. But that’s part of what I like about these first drawing activities: I tell them to just choose whichever face stands out or interests them the most, and spend a few minutes with it. Maybe later a voice or a meaning, or some historical weight or baggage, will attach itself to the face and the drawing. But for now you’re just moving your pencil or pen across a sheet of paper, waking up your brain.

Later on, students will add to the same three pages their own self portraits — and self portraits of themselves as superheroes or supervillains — and they’ll look up pictures of their own creative heroes and their own creative ancestors and draw their faces, too. The ones on the wall are just our starting point, and I absolutely adore the results:

Another reason I like starting with the same limited group of faces, before students branch out into their own, is because I love the variation you get from a few repeated, recognizable images. Each Gertrude Stein reflects its drawer’s personality above all; the result is part Gertrude Stein and mostly that student. No two Gertrude Steins are alike — but they’re just enough alike to make those differences magical.

You can see a few of the students’ own heroes and ancestors mixed in among these sample drawings; I’ll post some more later on in the year. (One day I gave them the option of drawing anything in the room. A student in my film class had recently brought in a wonderful, creepy E.T. mask that her father had made her, out of felt, years ago, as a Halloween costume; it was still hanging on a hook in the front of the room, which is why you see that E.T. There are a couple of stuffed Kermit the Frogs on my bookshelf, too.)

So:

3. Your Turn

Here’s an assignment, if you want one. I recommend starting your day with this, to warm yourself up — if not first thing in the morning, then right before you begin the most productive part of your workday. Take about five minutes to draw one of your own creative heroes or ancestors (a writer, artist, musician, filmmaker, comedian, teacher, lawyer, whatever — maybe choose somebody you admire from your own line of work, someone whose example reminds you why you do what you do).

Keep it to about five minutes. That way it’s not a huge time commitment, and it takes the pressure off: you can’t expect it to be super-accurate, and you can’t worry about whether it’s “good.”

When your five-ish minutes is up, look back upon your creation. Don’t ball it up or throw it away. Take a picture or scan it, and send me a copy (burgin@bhammountainradio.com). Then put the original on your refrigerator or over your desk, or leave it in a public space for a stranger to find.

Here’s an idea, if you want to really go all-in: get a notebook just for this. Spend five minutes doing this, every day for 30 days — or, if you like, for 365 days. Set a goal and keep it up. Create a diary of five-minute faces, a one-of-a-kind, homemade, ever-growing book of ancestors. Occasionally send me pictures (again: burgin@bhammountainradio.com).

Or, finally, an alternate assignment, if you prefer the mystery of losing yourself in a stranger’s face: Google “Czech authors” or “Ugandan authors” or “Indian” or “Hungarian authors” (someplace whose literacy ancestry is unknown to you). Choose the face that most arrests you, and spend five minutes drawing it. Be sure to write the author’s name beside, around, or under the drawing, and maybe (quickly) add to that a book title, birthdate, or fun fact, whatever you get when you click that person’s picture.

I am certain that you will create something magical that otherwise would never have existed. Give it five minutes and see.

P. S. This week I got my hands on the new book by Lynda Barry, Making Comics, and it’s wonderful, offering many of Barry’s own exercises to draw your way into unexpected and extraordinary, imaginative places. Don’t let the title fool you: her book isn’t for aspiring comics artists (although those people should get it, too), nearly so much as it is for the rest of us — especially those of us who quit drawing pictures around the same time we stopped being kids.

P. P. S. Here are a few of my favorite things from the drawings above: Langston Hughes at an enormous, blank typewriter; all the Toni Morrisons; the bored, tired, or mildly annoyed Whitmans; “powerful.” Also this truth: that sometimes when you’re drawing, your pencil produces something your brain didn’t mean or want (a “mistake”) and you just have to run with and reclaim it. So Zora Neale Hurston becomes “Evil Zora Neale Hurston” — which is pretty wonderful in itself.

Don’t forget to send me your drawings! Thanks for reading.

The School Week (highlights)

In a lot of ways, the school year that’s wrapping up now has been an especially frustrating one. But several moments this week have reminded me of what I like most about this job. For what it’s worth:

1. My first period Creative Writing students have been writing some extraordinary, inspiring words lately–and a group of them have started performing their poetry out loud in some really powerful ways. We’ve snuck off for the last couple of weeks to a little room off the back of the library, and while nobody else is looking they’ve been doing the most amazing things.

2. The same group has been goofily experimenting with various approaches to reading other people’s poetry out loud. The goal has been to get us thinking about the limitless ways in which our voices and our bodies can interact with the spoken word–whether enhancing, complicating, or undercutting the meaning of a text. Earlier this week we were seated around a big glass-topped conference table, and one student walked across the top of it in his socks while reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Constantly Risking Absurdity.” I was surprised how much this very literal approach to the poem–in which a poet is compared to an acrobat–actually managed to reshape my experience of Ferlinghetti’s words, which I’ve read many times. Lines like “…whenever he performs / above the heads / of his audience…” feel different when the poet is actually performing above the heads of his audience; the same goes for “balancing on eyebeams” and “paces his way / to the other side”–and all the other lines. And then there was this: we were all a little terrified the whole time that the table would break. Both the performer and the audience were physically engaged in a way I hadn’t expected: just as if they were watching a tightrope walker or acrobat, students around the table were holding their breath or clenching their teeth until the poem was over. Some where leaning in; others were leaning out. It was pretty special.

Luckily the table did not break.

3. Same class: a group of students read Charles Bukowski’s “The Laughing Heart” as if they were reading it to their dogs–in those funny, high-pitched voices people use just for addressing their pets. There is something hilarious about “You can’t beat death / but you can beat death in life, sometimes” when it’s read in a “You’re a good boy, yes you are” voice. (If you don’t believe me, try it.)

4. Another student read “The Laughing Heart” as if he was being slapped in the face with every word. And then, a second time, as if he was being tickled.

5. Two students read an excerpt from Green Eggs and Ham with such genuine drama that the class demanded they finish the rest of the book, so we’d know how it turned out.

6. Meanwhile, in my twelfth grade English class, we had some leeway in the end of our year, so I decided for the first time to throw The Catcher in the Rye into the mix. The first large chunk of it was due today. Luckily, the students are into it so far, and it’s a very refreshing change of pace from everything else that class has read this year. I know there are a lot of people out there who don’t like this book–or think it’s overrated, or whatever–but I don’t need to hear it. (My students are welcome to tell me they don’t like it–I just don’t want a bunch of haters chiming in in the comments below.) I liked the book fine when I first read it in high school, but it didn’t do a whole lot for me. I remember the wisdom was that if you’re going to read this book, you need to read it while you’re still in high school, because the older you get the less it will resonate. I assumed that was true, and like I said I liked it just fine, even if it didn’t change my life or anything. A few years ago I read this book for the first time as an adult, and I discovered how wrong this wisdom was; it meant much more to me then than it had meant the first time. And now that I’ve read it a couple times more I absolutely, wholeheartedly adore it. Reading a few chapters before school today made my morning. That kid breaks my heart in the most beautiful ways. He really does.

7. Then there was this. In my eleventh grade class today, a kid pointed out a disturbing trend: “In every book we’ve read this year, a woman gets slapped.” We all stopped and thought about it. Desdemona had just been slapped by Othello. Gatsby’s Tom Buchanan slaps his mistress Myrtle (really, he smashes her nose with his open palm). Tea Cake slaps Janie (and her previous husband is also abusive). No women get slapped in Of Mice and Men, but one does get shaken to death. And she’s the only woman in the book, and we never even know her name.

I’m not sure what to do about all this, but it surely doesn’t sit well. There’s no question, for starters, that we need to be teaching more women’s voices in our English classrooms, and that a wider range of voices brings in a wider range of experiences. I know that some schools have done better than others at opening up their curricula, but most places I think this is (still) a slow work in progress. As for this theme of literary slaps: if handled well, it can certainly (but doesn’t necessarily) generate some useful discussion about domestic violence, or about the portrayal of women in the “canon” that still shapes so much of what’s taught. I’ve tried to facilitate some good talks along these lines this year, with varying results. But I don’t think those conversations go far enough in counterbalancing a year’s worth of slapping. The worst slap of them all, by the way–because its author, unlike the others, seems so okay with it–is the one Janie receives from Tea Cake, the love of her life, in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Of all these slapping scenes, this is the only one that was written by a woman. It’s an uncomfortable acceptance of violence near the end of a beautiful book that’s (on most of its pages) empowering and ahead of its time.

It’s tough.

But here’s the part that made me happy: a student noticed the trend and pointed it out today, and got the room all worked up about it before the bell.

So all in all, it was a good day.

A P. S.: on teenagers, adults, guns, protests, Greek tragedy, and learning to listen…

Speaking of favorite moments in the classroom, a definite highlight of my year–albeit a heavy one–was the series of conversations some of my classes had about gun violence, student walk-outs, and other issues sparked by the Parkland shootings. I won’t go into all that here now, but feel free to ask me about it if you see me around.

What I do want to say here is not political. I don’t especially care what you think about guns. But I do care what you think about teenagers.

I’ve heard and seen so many adults in the last couple of months, especially on social media, bashing student protesters–mostly bashing those Stoneman Douglas kids–for taking a stance on guns. A popular punchline to a hundred memes suggests that “the same kids” who were eating Tide Pods a few weeks ago are demanding gun control this week. Ha, ha: it’s a dumb generation, goes the joke. I was recently sent–because it was supposed to be inspiring–a viral “open letter” in which a retired schoolteacher somewhere in America patiently explains to the kids of today exactly why they’re wrong. (“This is not a tweet or a text,” the letter begins, thinking condescension an effective way to make teenagers listen. “It’s called a letter; lengthy and substantial. Do you really want to make a difference? … First of all, put down your stupid phone…”) A whole lot of people, meanwhile, have been pointing out that teenagers are too emotional or too uninformed to participate in an important national conversation. Some have claimed that teenagers, unable to think for themselves, have just become pawns in the schemes of liberals or the media, whose opinions they’re brainlessly parroting. The worst extreme of all this, of course, is the sad bunch adults who have publicly attacked these young people in Florida or have cooked up conspiracy theories about those students’ true identities. It’s reprehensible stuff. But even the more benign, apparently well-intentioned forms of this teenager bashing–that open letter, for example–make me furious.

All I want to say is this. If you consider yourself an adult, please: go ahead and think what you’re going to think about guns. But don’t discount or discredit the young people. For the love of God, don’t bully them, and don’t use them as punchlines.

I’d ask you, even, to listen to them. And learn from them, and with them.

Before we started The Catcher in the Rye, my seniors were reading Antigone, an ancient Greek drama and the third installment in Sophocles’s Oedipus trilogy. My favorite character in that play has always been Haimon, the son of the bull-headed king Kreon. This year Haimon’s words seemed more timely than ever. He’s trying to convince his dad to listen to reason, but his dad is incapable of listening to anything or anyone, let alone his own son–a kid.

“Men our age, learn from him?” Kreon sneers. But what if, says Haimon, “I happen to be right? Suppose I am young. Don’t look at my age, look at what I do.”

That’s my favorite line in that play. I live in Birmingham, after all, and kids in this town have been known, before, to change the world.

But if you still don’t believe that the kids have something to say–some things we haven’t thought to say, ourselves, and some things we all need to hear–then please: come listen in on my first period class sometime. They will get you straight.

One more P. S.: recommended reading, listening, and viewing…

Before I sign off, a few recommendations relevant to this post:

A week ago today I got a copy of the wonderful book Syllabus by the great Lynda Barry. For the last seven days it has made my world brighter. I recommend it to anyone whose life could use some creative inspiration.

And speaking of creativity and (see above) of Lawrence Ferlinghetti–as another source of perpetual inspiration I will always recommend Ferlinghetti’s book Poetry as Insurgent Art, which he published at age 88, and which is small enough to fit in your pocket.

And here’s a video of Tom Waits reading “The Laughing Heart” by Bukowski.

(Near our school, by the way, there’s a walking/running path that goes through the woods, and there’s this empty little one-room house just off the path. I heard from some students several years ago that they snuck into the house and the words to this poem were written on the wall.)

Here’s one of my favorite Johnny Cash songs.

And speaking of how young people in Birmingham changed the world, here is a 40-minute film I show every year to my students, Mighty Times: The Children’s March. Every year it knocks me out. Every person should watch it. If you’re an educator, you can contact the Southern Poverty Law Center for a free copy and teaching materials (or just watch it at the Youtube link above).

Thanks for reading. See you next time.

A message for desolate hearts

For today’s post I mostly want to share a poem I learned today, by Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet. First, a quick backstory. (Skip the story and scroll straight to the poem if you like—I don’t mind!)

Last semester I had in my Creative Writing class an exchange student from Chile—for the sake of this blog, we’ll call him “Nico”—the sweetest, kindest kid you could hope to teach. It was a one-semester deal. His summer just started with the new year, and Friday he goes home; this week he unenrolled from our school. He stopped by today to say goodbye.

It’s one thing when a great kid graduates; you’ll still probably see that kid around, or at least you know it’s a possibility. But when that kid disappears to another hemisphere—that’s a real bummer. It was an emotional goodbye.

My other students are as brokenhearted about it as I am. Once last semester Nico was absent for just one day, and a student insisted we couldn’t go on without him. “He’s the backbone of this class!” she cried. I laughed but demurred. “You’re all the backbone of this class,” I said lamely, and I repeated it and hoped it sounded sincere: “This class has twenty backbones!” I did mean it, mostly. It really is a great group of students, and it’s an appealing metaphor, too—the class as a single freakish organism, made up of many backbones. But we all knew she was right. The day just wasn’t the same.

As it turned out, Nico and I got each other parting gifts. I gave him a copy of Ziggy Stardust; he was really into Bowie’s Blackstar album this year but hadn’t yet heard the stuff that made Bowie famous.

He gave me a Pablo Neruda book, one he had his mom send up from Chile. We’d read some Neruda in class last semester and watched the Italian movie about him, Il Postino. I’d shared with the class, among other things, Neruda’s poem, “Tonight I can write the saddest lines…,” and it made the whole room wonderfully miserable—a triumph for poetry. (I challenged the class to find a better break-up poem or break-up song than that one, anywhere. So far no one has.) We read Neruda’s “Ode to the Tomato” and wrote our own giddy odes to ordinary things. Whenever we’d read Neruda poems in class I’d asked Nico, since he was game, to read the originals out loud in Spanish, and the whole class would sit in attention; then someone would read a translation. I teach Neruda in Creative Writing most years. This year we did more than usual.

The book Nico gave me today was a Chilean edition of a book I’ve never heard of, 20 Poemas al Arbol y un Cactus de la Costa (20 Poems to Trees and a Cactus of the Coast). The poems are printed in Spanish and English, with beautiful illustrations opening each poem, every poem a different tree.

“Those who do not know the Chilean woods,” Neruda writes in a sort of preface, “do not know the planet. From those lands, from that soil and that mud, from that stillness, I have come out to walk, to sing throughout the world.”

After Nico left today I skipped to the last poem in the book, the “Ode to the Cactus of the Coast.” This is why I’m writing this post, to share a chunk of that poem.

It’s a good poem for any January—and, I think, for this January especially. The year opens not just with a sense of uncertainty but for a lot of us with anxiety and despair and, perhaps, a dangerous sense of depletion. At any rate, I know it was helpful for me to read these lines today. Maybe you’ll find help in them too, for reasons of your own. I plan to reread these words often, whenever I can use them.

The translation is by Mónica Cumar. The poem is a few pages longer than this, but this is how it ends, and how the book ends:

… Thus is the story,
and this
is the moral
of my poem:
wherever
you are, wherever you live,
in the last
solitude in this world,
in the scourge
of the earth’s fury,
in the corner
of humiliations,
brother,
sister,
wait, work
hard
with your little being and your roots.

One day
for you,
for all of us
from
your heart a red ray will burst forth,
you’ll also bloom one morning; the Spring
has not forgotten you, brother,
sister,
no,
it has not forgotten you:
I say it to you
I assure you of that,
because the terrible cactus,
the bristly
son of the sands,
conversing
with me
entrusted me with this message
for your desolate heart.

And now
I tell you
and I tell myself:
brother, sister,
wait,
I am certain:
Spring shall not forget us.

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